iPod inventor says Apple has winning recipe for developing products

Father of the iPod Tony Fadell has compared the difference between designing new products at Apple and Philips.

Fadell was hired by Philips in 1995, but went on to start up his own company Fuse where he developed a music player that he pitched to Apple. That idea became the iPod. Fadell was Senior Vice President of the iPod division at Apple until 2008.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Design conference, Fadell described the differences between developing new products at the two companies.

At Philips projects can be killed at any time: “Nine times out of 10, or 99 times out of 100, they would kill the project, either at the beginning, the middle or right before the product was supposed to be shipped,” Fadell said, according to Gigaom.

This mentality means that the people working on new projects are less motivated, as they don’t know if they have a future.

Such a culture means that designers don’t do their best work. They just go through the motions of creating a product, Fadell explained.

In contrast, at Apple 99 percent of projects that made it past certain milestones ship, said Fadell.

“When you’re in a culture that has a point of view, and drives to launch everything it does, you know you’re on the hook and you better bring your best game every time,” said Fadell.

Fadell indicates that when a project commences at Apple everyone, management, designers and marketers, understands the message and the customer envisioned for the product. Presumably nobody at Apple wastes time developing a project that doesn’t meet approval from the very beginning.